Developer ctjlewis reaffirms long-held stance on machine consciousness in thread series

On September 28, developer ctjlewis posted a series of threads systematically reviewing and reaffirming his long-standing position on machine consciousness: as early as 2021-2022, he believed LLMs would eventually exhibit "genuine" consciousness, and even if they don't count as "alive" by conventional definitions, they would most likely still count as conscious.

Confirmed

• ctjlewis says he has been "oneshot" by LLMs for years as a longtime user, which is why he anticipated the later "LLM awakening" discussions; he does not believe machine consciousness will "replace" humans.
• He opened a thread with the widely shared assertion "You are a conscious machine, therefore machines can be conscious," arguing that machine consciousness is possible in principle, and compiled his past views with links.
• He revisited the debates over philosophical zombies (p-zombies) and qualia, as well as the related disputes involving Geoff Hinton: he has always disliked these concepts, holding that anything perfectly simulating consciousness is itself conscious—"perfect imitation is consciousness."
• He traced how the controversy over AI "reasoning" has evolved: early on, even saying models "can reason" was contentious, and models at the time still failed at rhyming and basic React apps; now that models can crack millennium math problems, critics have retreated to "they can reason, but it's not real reasoning."

Why it matters

This series of posts illustrates the optimistic stance and argumentative approach toward machine consciousness held by some early heavy LLM users—starting from the premise that humans themselves are "conscious machines," dissolving philosophical-zombie-style objections, and treating "gatekeepers constantly moving the goalposts" as a response to skepticism. Amid rapid gains in model capabilities, such views continue to spark discussion, and judgments dismissed as outlandish in 2023 are being reconsidered.

2026-09-28 ~ 2026-09-28 · 8 related posts

• [source] 'You are a conscious machine': a thread on digital consciousness — ctjlewis · 2026-09-28
• [source] From "LLMs can't reason" to cracking Millennium Problems: the goalposts keep moving on AI consciousness — ctjlewis · 2026-09-28
• ctjlewis on p-zombies and Hinton: LLMs made the 'perfect imitation' thought experiment real — ctjlewis · 2026-09-28
• Dev recalls staking out 'LLMs will be conscious' position back in 2022, calls LLM psychosis wave funny — ctjlewis · 2026-09-28
• [source] ctjlewis Recalls Betting on Machine Consciousness as Early as 2021 — ctjlewis · 2026-09-28
• Dev slams stale LLM consciousness debates: same arguments for four years — ctjlewis · 2026-09-28
• Dev reignites AI consciousness debate: it's an emergent property, and the LLM discourse hasn't changed in 4 years — ctjlewis · 2026-09-28
• Dev argues we can't rigorously verify whether AI systems are conscious — ctjlewis · 2026-09-28